Run around and blow up lots of stuff... and I mean LOTS of stuff!
But enough about the characters and the storyline, what about the actual gameplay itself? Well this is pretty much your standard FPS fare with left stick to move, right stick to look, trigger to fire and so on. Vehicle control at first feels a little odd as reverse is on the right bumper and braking on the left trigger, but you soon get used to it and jumping from driving position to a gun is just a button press away.What will become apparent right from the start is the way that developers, DICE, have managed to combine the superb Frostbite engine and all its complexities with arcade-style gameplay. For ages I’ve been banging on about sensibly using physics and destructible environments in a game and finally it looks like DICE have gotten the balance just right. Objects bounce and roll as you’d expect them to in a game and stuff that, in the game world context, should be destructible can be blown to smithereens. So no more of this collapsible wall but invincible plywood door crap… nope, you want to gain entry to a house? Just blow away the wall. Fancy exposing that heavy machine gun nest so you can rake it with fire? Pump an M203 round into the roof. Oncoming truck full of bad guys? Blow a tyre off and watch them crash.
Click for larger imageThe point being that DICE have taken an action film approach to the gameplay in Battlefield: Bad Company. We all know that in real life you can’t flip a car half a dozen times and walk away, but in the movies you can. From bitter experience, being anywhere near an explosion is going to pepper you debris but in the movies we often see the hero walk out with just a singed hair-do. And that’s exactly the approach Battlefield: Bad Company takes too.
Take too much damage and you can use a health injector to recover, which then slowly recharges for the next time you blunder into an enemy killing zone. There are ammo crates dotted about all over the map for you to top up your stocks and the maps have been designed in such a way that charging for an ammo crate and then suing that as a base of fire rarely pays off.
Click for larger imageThere’s plenty of fixed guns for you to take control of, all of which are simple to operate and tricky to master. My personal favourite is the artillery piece, which I utterly rule with in the multiplayer and it just so happens to be the first fixed gun you’ll get to use in the single player story. (Hint: The trick is in the timing… remember to lead your targets!).
Graphically, that Frostbite engine developed by DICE should be applauded as Battlefield: Bad Company looks absolutely stunning. There’s judicious use of depth of field blur, motion blur, particle effects and various other graphical tricks and explosions, even the mundane grenade against a wall type, look brilliant. I just wish there was more rubble knocking about after I’ve finished blasting my way through a house but then again, rubble doesn’t really come high on the list of ‘stuff that gamers want to see in a frantic shooter’, so I’ll shut up and sulk quietly.
Click for larger imageThat said, one thing that you need to have in an open warfare FPS is a big playing area and the playground in Battlefield: Bad Company is big. Really, really big. Bloody enormous in fact. Draw distances are immense and, to underline the fact you’re playing in a big world, it can take a couple of minute driving just to get to your next objective. That’s not to say trekking back and forth is boring, as there’s very little doubling back needed, and the scenery is varied enough to not feel like you’re driving over one huge texture for the sake of it. And speaking of textures, everything is nicely detailed with a used, worn look to objects which sit nicely in the game environment.
But if as much as the graphics are good, the sound is even better... for the most part. Popping off a few sounds just like you’re firing outside as the shots echo off the surrounding buildings or the distant hills. But the sound engine have a flaw in that it seems to think anything indoors should have plenty of echo… so you can be standing inside a handy attic, ready to blast the Russians, (or later on, mercenaries), to find instructions being shouted up to you by your team-mates are all garbled because the sound engine thinks you’re standing in a large, echoing drainpipe. Now I know that DICE have implemented HDR audio in the Frostbite engine but sorry guys, it needs a bit more tweaking…
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